Bad company

The prime minister held a press conference today to re-announce existing funding for programs associated with “the digital economy” and “building for the future”. Labor’s Tim Watts said that it was the fourth time some of these funds have been announced. It’s hard to know what to make of such press conferences, other than that they’re cheap stunts. Like yesterday’s news drop to The Australian about the government’s support for a “blueprint” for advanced manufacturing, it’s impossible to gauge what Scott Morrison is actually committing to. These are sectors that rely on the sorts of research and development programs, higher education and skills training that the Coalition has cut funding from for the past seven years. The details, Morrison assures us, will be in next week’s budget, but if recent history is any guide, the impacts will be much less impressive than the associated promises.

Given that announcements are so central to Morrison’s leadership strategy, and his words so cheap, it’s fascinating to see which promises the government won’t make.

Guardian Australia today reported that the Morrison government refused to sign a global pledge endorsed by 64 countries committing them to reverse biodiversity loss – because it was inconsistent with Australia’s policies.

The Leaders’ Pledge for Nature was launched this week ahead of a major UN summit on biodiversity being hosted virtually from New York. Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Justin Trudeau, Jacinda Ardern and Boris Johnson are among the world leaders who have signed it.

Australia was invited to sign it, but like the leaders of Russia, Brazil, India and the US, our prime minister has refused to sign on to the 10-point plan. 

The Guardian piece quotes a Morrison spokesperson: “Australia has already committed to a net-zero emissions target by the second half of the century as set out in the Paris agreement.” (Note, by the way, how the 2050 target has now become “the second half of the century”.)

But the pledge is about much more than (weak) emissions targets. 

The Morrison government, said its spokesperson, “will not agree to other targets unless we can tell the Australian people what they will cost to achieve and how we will achieve it”.

Readers should look over the actual pledge. The principles listed are uncontroversial, and there are no enforceable targets; only aspirations to achieve “sustainable societies” and to put “biodiversity, climate and the environment as a whole at the heart both of our COVID-19 recovery strategies and investments”. The ambition is to work towards reducing pollution and waste, and to develop and implement a set of “clear and robust goals and targets, underpinned by the best available science, technology, research as well as indigenous and traditional knowledge”.  

Which of these things does our government object to? To redoubling efforts to address “biodiversity loss, land, freshwater and ocean degradation, deforestation, desertification, pollution and climate change in an integrated and coherent way”? To “accelerating the transition to sustainable growth”? To committing “to ending environmental crimes”?

It’s absurd that a responsible nation would disagree with these principles (just look at the company it puts us in), but it’s also unsurprising. The current government’s approach to environmental management is to try to reduce its commitments to any action, to undermine the existing protections (for example, the Environmental Protection Act), to change laws to allow land clearing, and to accelerate investment in damaging industries such as gas. It’s 2020, and the Coalition still doesn’t have a policy to significantly reduce carbon emissions. 

The Australian published an article today stating that Australia’s resource exports are expected to collapse by $40 billion in the next two years, and most energy experts would point out that this is only the start of the decline for coal and other fossil fuels. The Australian public is overwhelmingly in favour of stronger action to protect the environment and prevent climate change. So, if there’s public support for change, and for renewables, and a strong economic case for more environmental action, why is the government working so hard to stymie them?

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